


You Called Me Sweetheart

by WhiteRoseOfRivendell



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Cas loves Dean, Dean is gone & Cas can’t deal, Empathetic Sam, Endverse, M/M, Post Season 13, Sad and happy at the same time, Sweetheart Challenge accepted, This is the way it is supposed to end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-03
Updated: 2018-02-03
Packaged: 2019-03-12 22:51:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13557273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhiteRoseOfRivendell/pseuds/WhiteRoseOfRivendell
Summary: A lone angel stands at a quiet grave. He mourns and loves, but can’t bring himself to say the word goodbye.A fic written for the Hey Sweetheart Challenge. Takes place post season 13. It’s endverse, really. I’m holding on to the hope that the writers will make Destiel canon.P.S.-Don’t worry about the sadness, I make up for it in the end!!!





	You Called Me Sweetheart

Hello Dean. 

I suppose I need to stop saying that with any hope that you’ll respond. You’re not here. You’ll never be here again...because you’re gone. I’m...I’m sorry if I’m stating the obvious. I’m having a difficult time accepting that this is the end. How many times have we been here, right here, on one side or the other? There was always another chance. But this, this is the last time. 

After Billie showed up, after she took you...I...

I wasn’t there. When she took you, I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there to say goodbye. Too little, too late, once again. It seems to be a habit with me and I am... sorry. I’m so sorry....for all my... shortcomings. And I’m...I’m sorry, most of all, for not being there. I should have been there.

All I saw was a glimpse of you. Your soul was so bright. It was beautiful, just like I remembered. I couldn’t help but think of the first time I touched it, pulling you from the darkness into the light. It all came flooding back, and I ran faster toward it, toward the memory; but it was gone before I could reach you. You were gone. I don’t even know if you saw me running. Sam saw and he caught me, my hand still outstretched. I fought against him for a short time, but mostly I just sank to my knees in the dirt. He grabbed me by the shoulders and in his ever empathetic manner, he told me that this was it. This was how it was supposed to happen. This is what Billie had been waiting so long for. The end. I have never heard Sam so broken. I’ve never heard that kind of resignation in his voice. I hated her in that moment. I hated that she took you from...us. 

Sam, uncharacteristically, seems to have accepted it. I don’t know what Billie said to him, how she explained this. Perhaps after all we have been through, knowing that there is no more End-of-Heaven-and-Earth threat, he is fine with letting go, with letting you go. That isn’t to say that he isn’t very much changed. His steps are slower. His laugh heavier. I hear him sometimes in the middle of the night shifting around the bunker. There are times when I shift with him. I think we both appreciate the company. 

He’ll be fine. We’ll be...fine.

You know, even as I touch the cold stone and look at your name carved above a grave, I still can’t...I just feel like it is somehow wrong. It shouldn’t be here...it...it shouldn’t be cold. You weren’t cold, no matter how you tried to convince people otherwise. Your smile was warm. Your hands were always warm. When you would wrap your arms around me, I could feel them holding me, and I felt warm. I wish... I wish that I had done that more. I wish I would have hugged you more. It’s such a simple way that mortals convey affection, but so powerful. As powerful as I was, I never felt more so than when we embraced. I remember the first time that you did it. I was so ignorant then. I wasn’t sure why you wanted to press yourself against me and squeeze me with your arms. Though once I realized what was happening, I couldn’t get the thought of how pleasant it was out of my mind. Maybe it was just that I couldn’t get you out of my mind. 

When I was tasked with saving you, it was not a task that I took lightly, but I was indifferent to you as a human being. It came down as an order to be followed without hesitation or dissension. Our care for mortals was mandated by God and so my impetus was without question. I fought through the demons and the flames. I pushed past the tortured souls, screaming for absolution. I pushed through with all my might, but I began to think it was folly. Then I saw you. Your body was mangled and hanging all but lifeless in the air above the abyss. Each burn and slash lit up your form like a beacon. As I stood above you, peering down through the rusted chains and poisonous fog, I couldn’t help but stare transfixed. Your face was peaceful...unimaginable in a place like that. You rested from the torture as if you were lying in a soft, sunny field. I decided then, that was what I wanted for you. No matter what it took, I wanted to see that peaceful look forever. When God’s orders weren’t enough, your face renewed my resolve and I gripped you tight. I believe, in that moment, that I loved you. That moment, and every moment since.

I should have told you, and told you often. 

I wonder if you ever really knew. You acted as if you loved me, in your own way. I didn’t realize what that way was, at first. It took me years to figure it out. Now I think of how much was lost because of my ignorance. We lost that time that we could have been....what we are...were... what we should have been all along. Why couldn’t we just say it?

I’m sorry, Dean, I just...I’m sorry. I can’t do this. You’re up there, and I’m down here, and I wish it was as simple as passing through those gates, but you know that can’t happen. I can’t go home, not after what happened with Jack and Lucifer. I have no place in Heaven as far as my brothers and sisters are concerned. I don’t fit in here on Earth. I don’t belong anywhere, except maybe hunting with Sam.

Soon Sam will be gone as well. They will all be gone, and I’ll be the last one. Alone here. I suppose I will just live on. Perhaps I will continue to hunt, like you taught me to. Like you both taught me to. But I don’t know; I don’t think I’m interested in it if you and Sam are not there with me. 

And I just... miss you.

I miss the way you say things, the way you would talk to me. I miss you barking orders at me, as if I wasn’t a celestial being eons your senior. I miss you teasing me about my choice of cars or ignorance in basic human behavior. I miss you lecturing me about personal space and then crowding me on the couch. I miss your jibes and your jokes; you were always making fun of me. You were relentless, but the look in your eyes was always soft. Your eyes would always relent, and that was why I could never leave. I could never leave you.

Do you remember the case in Chicago with the ghoul hiding out in the basement of that tenement? One of the first real cases we worked on after I had decided to become a hunter. I messed up. I almost ruined the whole case. Sam could have been killed...you could have been ki ... All I could think about as we drove back to the motel was how I could have lost you and it would have been my fault. All I have ever wanted to do was keep you safe and happy. I don’t seem to do either very well, but you have never forsaken me. 

When we got to the motel that night, Sam jumped out to go check in. As I went to get out of the car, you grabbed my arm. You held me there, with you. You looked into my eyes and...I tried not to look back. Even without my grace, I could see everything. I didn’t know if you wanted me to see everything, but I could and I wanted so badly to see it.

“Hey, it’s alright, Cas,” you said. 

Your forgiveness only served to make me feel worse and I couldn’t help but grip the seat back where our arms rested. Your thumb began rubbing circles on the back of my hand then. I think you must have done it absently because as soon as you recognized that it was happening, you stopped. You looked like a child caught in the act of some misdeed. Your face changed quickly after that, back to the mischievous grin that so often slides across your lips.

And then you said, in the most ridiculous 1940s detective voice, “You did good, sweetheart, real good.”

Sweetheart.

You called me sweetheart.

And I laughed in spite of myself. 

You may have only been trying to lighten the mood, but the way you looked at me then, I felt like my grace had been restored. You looked at me and smiled. You paused, and you knew. You had to have known. I was so...human, so new to sensations and emotions that I had only ever seen from afar. You saw it. Maybe that’s what allowed you to call me by that endearment. Maybe it was the levity. Maybe it was the safety. Maybe, in that moment, the need in my face was stronger than your hesitation. Maybe I saw the jest in your smile fade into the background of your searching eyes. Maybe I just wished that those eyes would finally find me. 

Now here we are and there’s nothing I can do. I will never see you again, and it’s...crushing. Sometimes I feel like I can’t move. I told you that it would be me, the one left here. I suppose that it’s a blessing that I didn’t have to be the one who...took care of you in the end. At least you got a few more years with The Mark being gone. Still, I always knew that I would be the one to stay. Billie will come for Sam one day. I only hope that I’ll be there to say goodbye. You’ll be together then, and that thought is comforting. It is my acceptance. No matter how long I live down here, the years that I spent with you will be my favorites. Despite the endgame, it was worth it. You were worth it, and I wouldn’t change a thing.

 

_Some years later, after the freeze of winter and warm summer wind had changed places many times, a man clad in a tan trench coat could be seen walking slowly through the misty valleys of the forest. His shoulders were held tall and were shrouded in what looked to be a drape of black feathers. If one were to let their imagination run away with them, one might say they looked like dark wings. Not the wings of a raven mind you, but more stately and noble, or at least they appeared to have been once. Now one would see them dull, folded dispiritedly against the man’s back, barely kept from grazing the leaf covered ground._

_Some time later, those leaves would change. The burnt red and bright orange would fade. The ground, so slowly tread upon, would cease to exist altogether. A soft field of dark green would be allowed to replace it under his weary feet. The mist, whose company had been much needed throughout the decades, would bid goodbye to the well traveled angel and hand him back through the door from whence he came. No hard feelings, no begrudging discourse. Each step forward would bring about more and more understanding, until at last he stood at the foot of the soul he had been charged with saving all those years ago._

_A few silent moments would pass and the wayward angel would fall to his knees then. The man, his hazel eyes blurred with disbelief, would come to stand from his porch swing. The word ‘Castiel’ would fall from his trembling lips. The man would fall then, deeper and faster than any journey he had previously taken. They would fall together, kneeling in the downy grass, penitent before a brightly lit wood cabin in the wilderness. Their heads would meet as the laughter of friends long past drifted by their ears. The kiss that was never able to bloom upon their lips in their Earthly bonds, would now take form, and it would be known to all as miraculous._

_A brother would smile knowingly at the door. He would turn, a sigh of ‘Thank Chuck’ escaping from his lips, and he would walk then to rejoin the rest of The Family inside the house. They could be seen then, speaking and laughing around a large table carved of mahogany and honey. Two chairs would sit vacant, waiting for their rightful and righteous owners. But they would not wait long, for the great celebration to welcome them would not wait for an eternity. Soon a man and an angel would step across the threshold and begin anew. And the Earth would be restored to order, for Heaven in its infinite glory, would be as it was originally purposed._

The End


End file.
